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Quietly, Pataki Continues To Push Gambling Measures

Suddenly, gambling has become the pivotal issue in state budget talks, and once again, it is Gov. George E. Pataki who is pushing it.

With Mr. Pataki insisting that new sources of revenue are needed to meet the spending demands of the Legislature, he and legislative leaders this week took up three gambling options: join the multistate Powerball lottery, allow the Seneca Indians to build casinos in western New York; and permit horse racing tracks to install video lottery terminals, which are like slot machines without the levers.

If even two of the three proposals win approval -- and it appears likely that the casino and lottery measures will -- it would represent the biggest expansion of legalized gambling in New York State since the creation of the state lottery in the 1960's. And behind it would be Mr. Pataki, perhaps the most pro-gambling governor the state has ever had, who has championed gambling to legislatures while publicly saying little about it.

In 1995, his first year in office, Mr. Pataki persuaded the Legislature to adopt the Quick Draw video lottery game, and since then he has tried unsuccessfully to expand the number of terminals. Mr. Pataki was the primary force behind a proposed amendment to the State Constitution, ultimately defeated in 1997, to permit non-Indian casinos in resort areas like the Catskills. He has promoted the development of Indian casinos by the Senecas and the Mohawks. And it was he who proposed joining Powerball.

''There isn't any kind of gambling he doesn't seem to think is right,'' said State Senator Frank Padavan, a Republican of Queens who is the Legislature's most vocal opponent of gambling. ''No other governor has done it to the same degree. And he's the one pushing it now.''

New York is just one of the states affected by a national proliferation in gambling over the last decade. The most marked increase has been in Indian casinos -- 72 tribes now have them -- but there are also riverboat casinos, more state lotteries and more states in multistate lotteries. Forty-seven states now have some form of legalized gambling.

And that, the governor's office says, is why New York should follow the trend. ''All you have to do is look at the border with Connecticut because there's a mad rush of New Yorkers to play Powerball,'' said Michael McKeon, the governor's spokesman. ''We know that New Yorkers are already spending $300 million a year in Canada at the casinos. New Yorkers are going in droves to Atlantic City. We think it makes sense to keep some of that money in New York.''

But with the exception of advocating Indian casinos as economic development for depressed areas of the state, Mr. Pataki, a Republican, has not been eager to be seen as promoting gambling.

When the proposed constitutional amendment went to the Legislature, he did not lobby aggressively for it or publicly say much about it. When the Legislature allowed Quick Draw to lapse two years ago, Mr. Pataki insisted publicly that he did not care, but lawmakers said he lobbied furiously in private to restore it. While his budgets have proposed expanding Quick Draw and joining Powerball, the governor has barely mentioned them in public forums.

In the current talks, aides to Mr. Pataki say it is not clear who initially raised the idea of video lottery terminals at racetracks, the most controversial of the gambling options under discussion. But legislators and aides insist that the governor has been the only one pushing it.

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As the governor prepares for an expected run for a third term next year, a more full-throated support for gambling could erode his support on the political right, which includes the only organized opposition to gambling in New York: the Conservative Party, the Catholic Church and a Protestant alliance upstate called New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms.

''I think it could hurt him with some of the conservative base, the Christian right,'' said Michael Long, chairman of the Conservative Party, which endorsed Mr. Pataki in the past and is likely to do so again. ''It doesn't help with the overwhelming majority of leaders in the Conservative Party.''

Studies show that it is mostly the poor who patronize lotteries and casinos, that those players are disproportionately black and Hispanic, and that there are millions of people with gambling problems across the country.

The push to expand gambling, Senator Padavan said, is ''one more effort to solve budgetary problems on the backs of people who can least afford it.''

But some minority lawmakers agree with Mr. Pataki that gambling is inevitable and that New York should reap some of the profits. Others privately admit to having deep reservations about the social consequences, but say that gambling is so popular in their communities that it would be pointless to oppose it.

Over the years, the Democratic Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and the Republican majority leader of the Senate, Joseph L. Bruno, have taken a more cautious approach to expanding gambling than Mr. Pataki has, often expressing concerns about it.

Lawmakers in both parties expect New York to join Powerball as part of a budget settlement, a move projected to generate $145 million a year in state revenue. Approval of Indian casinos is also widely expected, eventually, but getting there could be difficult. Those casinos can only be established under compacts between the state and the tribe, and a state court has ruled that such compacts are subject to approval by the Legislature.

The plan to put video lottery terminals at racetracks would meet with the most opposition in the Legislature, but lawmakers have said they cannot rule out that it would win passage as well.